our initiatives

While the day to day work of teaching our children is of central importance, we believe in creating bright spots to push our sense of possibility, and to spread what we are learning beyond Teach For India.

TFIx is a year-long Incubation Program and lifelong Learning Circle, for passionate entrepreneurs working in the education space. If you're in a city where Teach For India's two-year Fellowship is not currently operating (Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Pune) and want to adapt and launch the Fellowship model in a way that suits your context, TFIx could provide the support you need.

In the program, while each entrepreneur crafts his/her own vision and organisation, they all share a two-fold theory of change: the commitment to teaching children from marginalised backgrounds and simultaneously building a movement of leaders to achieve educational equity.

By being a part of the TFIx Incubation Program, you will not only develop an understanding of Teach For India’s culture and values, which we hold very dearly, but also get access to the following opportunities:

Learning Circles : where the entrepreneurs will come together to support each other’s’ ideas; develop technical skills such as recruitment, budgeting, program design etc; and learn how to build the capacity of their organisation

One-on-one : on the ground coaching from TFIx coaches

Mentorship: from leaders and external educators

Courses and webinars: developed from Teach For India training resources

Organization Vision:: We envision a society where the Education of Children transforms them into a youth who are better equipped with the necessary knowledge, skills, attitude and motivation to address our societal needs and problems

We understand that the first few years of social entrepreneurship can be hard– be it fundraising, operations or hiring talent. To support our education entrepreneurs through this important phase of their journey, Teach For India has launched InnovatED.

InnovatED is an incubator to support early-stage education entrepreneurs from Teach For India to take their innovations from the project or prototype stage to a sustainable organization.

The 8-month programme will provide a springboard to catapult our most promising entrepreneurs towards the path of establishing organizations that meet the diverse needs of children.

Areas of support include:

Through InnovatED, we envision our Alumni developing skills and knowledge that will accelerate their ability to become social entrepreneurs - working towards eliminating educational inequity in India.

If you are not an entrepreneur but are interested in innovation and entrepreneurship - Sign up here to be a SUPPORTER for the InnovatED programme and contribute your skills to help our budding entrepreneurs

In November of 2014, Teach For India staged the Broadway-inspired musical Maya to over 10,000 people. Maya, however, was created to be much larger than a spectacular show. It was envisioned to be a symbol of student leadership, and what an excellent education could look like for all children.

The Maya Musical started as a journey of exploring student leadership. 30 children were taken on a life-changing quest of self-discovery where they, like Princess Maya in the story, embarked on a journey of discovering their values and their brightest light. Over 18 months, the Maya children traveled across the country, performed at conferences and public spaces, practiced their values through acts of kindness and worked on a student-led project to spread happiness in 100 ways through the arts.

The Musical was a partnership between Teach For India students and artists on Broadway. The Musical is an original script, with Broadway composed music. Its message of potential to all is clear: Find your light, and spread it to the world.

After the Musical, we launched Maya 2.0, taking learnings from the Maya Musical and spreading it to more children. Today, six of our cities have groups of Maya children experimenting with the Maya practices, each adapting and building on the original Maya journey. Maya 2.0 includes a group of children in Hyderabad who are performing street theatre and a group of Maya Chennai children who are staging their own Maya Production. The original Maya Musical children continue on the next leg of their journey, learning what it means to lead change and spread their light.

Beyond Teach For India, Maya offers free tools for any child to use - an online Maya book, a simplified Maya script, the Find Your Light journey, the Maya documentary and a Maya Cineplay that will release shortly.

inspirED is an educational conference that aims to bring together people with varied backgrounds with a common goal to end educational inequity. Our participants range from students, school teachers, school leaders, headmasters, teacher trainers, entrepreneurs and government officials to corporate CSR heads and others. We believe that it is possible for all children in our country to attain an excellent education if citizens from across sectors come together to create solutions, and hence seek diversity in our participants for different perspectives, ideas and solutions.

The conferences aim to bring awareness and deeper understanding of the educational landscape in India and the urgency of the crisis of educational inequity. They provide a platform to connect people, spark ideas and start dialogues around common problems. Sessions on best practices in the classroom, school and system push conversations on what an excellent education for all children looks like and how we can get there together. The conference hosts a student-led education exhibition that showcases student leadership and provides inspiration and a sense of possibility to our participants.

Every year, the two-day conference takes place in different cities including Delhi, Pune, Mumbai, and Hyderabad. The ideas and solutions sparked through the conferences address challenges faced both by the city and the country. Our most recent conference, in January 2016, took the form of an Innovation Jam in Pune, where participants solved for the question: How do we ensure high-school students in Pune attain the knowledge, skills and mindsets necessary for the 21st century?.

Speakers at the conference range from politicians and policy makers to school leaders and teachers and experts in various fields of education. The sessions run along three pathways: the classroom (techniques and tips for best practices in classroom teaching), the school (tools and strategies to transforms schools) and the system (discussions around government policy, social entrepreneurship and systemic change at a macro level).

Our hope is that the conference is a launching pad for several collaborative partnerships and solutions in education, following which participants continue working with each other in the future.

Firki is a world-class, open-source blended learning programme for teachers across India to access, use and transform their teaching practice.

Firki focuses on the principles and strategies that have proved to be successful in improving teacher competencies in low-resource communities. Firki helps a teacher identify his or her strengths and leverage them to build effective practice leading to improved student outcomes. The bi-lingual content (English and Hindi) is presented through engaging videos, modeling strategies, teacher interviews and student videos to capture all aspects relevant to transforming teaching practice. As of now, Firki has over 3000 users who are teachers, teacher-trainers, non-profit facilitators and school leaders.

The online portion of Firki, which anchors the whole model, includes coursework and online training, and is 10% of an educator’s learning time. The portal currently has 8 online courses: Investment, Classroom Practice, Goal Setting, Planning and Preparation, Personal Development, Basic English, Basic Math and a Vision of Excellence. Once an educator has taken a course, they have the ability to directly apply it within their classrooms - where 70% of their learning happens - through full-time teaching practice. Educators sign up with others from their school, enabling the remaining 20% of their learning to happen through coaching, mentoring and communities of practice.

Firki, in partnership with master teachers, pedagogy experts and teacher education programmes, aspires to be the most effective and accessible route to a high-quality alternative certification for teaching in India.

Together, Firki and its partners will build advocacy around the importance of investing in the professional development of teachers and the need for collective social impact in the area of teacher education and support.